جامعة نزوى
University of Nizwa
College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Foreign Languages
ENGL160:
British Civilization and Literature 1
Compiled by:
Ms. Fatima Salman
INTRODUCTION:
Basic questions about Literature
What is literature, anyway?
Why study literature?
How do you study literature?
Is there literature that's worth studying and literature that isn't? How do we make the distinction?
How does one critically think about and read literature?
What is literature?
Literature is literally “acquaintance with letters” (Latin littera meaning “an individual written character/letter”). The term has come to identify a collection of texts. As a proper noun it refers to a whole body of literary work
We are concerned more with imaginative or creative writing. The kind of writing that is not real.
A text is a creation of the poet/author/dramatist available to an audience and meant to create an impact – intellectual and emotional
Words are the literary artist’s tools. Literature is verbal art.
Why study literature?
We study literature because it enriches us; for wisdom, for entertainment, for an understanding of diverse human experiences.
We study literature because it is profound, beautiful and moving.
We study literature because it is an excellent way to sharpen your close reading skills, enable critical thinking, and refine our general sense of art appreciation.
How do we study literature?
There are many critical ways to approach a text including the formalist, biographical, historical, textual, psychological, mythological, sociological, deconstructionist, feminist, or reader-response, semiotic etc.
Formalist critics focus on the formal elements of a text. They examine the relationship between form and meaning, emphasizing how a work is arranged. This kind of close reading pays special attention to diction, figures of speech, plot, characterization, narrative technique, rhyme schemes, metre etc. Formalists look at how these elements work together to give shape to a work while contributing to its meaning. Information that goes beyond the text - biography, history, politics, economics, and so on - are regarded as extrinsic.
Theories of literature
Imitative theory
Aristotle (384-322BC Poetics), mimesis, recreation, representation; art refines nature, learn about nature
Expressive Theory
Artist expresses his/her feelings
Affective theory
Work of art arouses emotion in / affects the reader
Critically thinking about and reading literature
ANALYZE: What does the passage mean, literally?
INTERPRET: What does it mean figuratively? How do you read it and what suggests that this is a valid interpretation?
QUESTION: What problems are suggested by the reading? What philosophical question(s) does the reading inspire?
SYNTHESIZE: How does this reading compare or contrast in content/form with what you've read before?
EVALUATE: The writing. What criteria do you use to establish this judgment? What defines a first rate poem, play, story etc?
Old English Literature/ background:
English literature is divided into three stages:
Old English literure from the 8th century -1100 or 1066
Middle English literature from 1100 or 1066- 1500
Modern English literatue 1500- now
“England” as a word is derived from a name of a tribe. The major powers that dominated the area were the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. The three tribes invaded Britain, and the original inhabitants “Celtics” ran away to Wales.
By the year 450 A.D., Britain was filled with the Germanic people, and the Angles and the Saxons became very powerful, while the Jutes became weak.
Old English was a form of a Germanic language, it took the form of a synthetic language, i.e. it can express more than one function at the same time, for example, “a” at the end of a word means the possessive of the plural.
Religion:
The people were pagan; they influenced the Christians in the use of the word “Lord” for God.
Between 450-597 A.D., the Anglo-Saxons converted gradually to Christianity. The image of God in their minds was that He is meek, mild, and humble; however, this belief changed later as people started to see God as a very powerful being.
Christianity is based on the idea of the original sins of Adam and Eve, the concept of Salvation, Jesus crucifixion.
They believe that Jesus Christ begged God to allow him to come to earth and to be killed for Adam’s sins so as to make everyone responsible for his own sins rather than for Adam’s sins.
Society:
The Anglo-Saxon tribal man was expected to be strong and brave.
The Comitatus, a body of companions; a retinue of warriors attached to a king or chieftain consisted of the close, closer, and the closest followers of the leader or the chieftain man.
The Comitatus contained the lord (i.e. the leader or the king) and his retainers. The retainers were expected to protect their king, and to avenge him if he was killed. They had to fight with him until they die. They were expected to be strong, brave, skillful and faithful. The greatest agony for an Anglo-Saxon man was not belonging to a tribe or a Comitatus.
On the other hand, the lord must be strong, brave, and skillful in fighting. He was called “ring-giver” or “protector of the people” because he was generous and brave.
The relationship between the lord and his followers must be mutual. They had to fight with him while he had to be generous with them
The stronger the Comitatus was the richer the king or the lord would be.
The Comitatus would meet at the Hall where they would plan for wars, drink and talk.
The hall indicated the power and the pride of the society which emphasized the values of heroism.
The Wanderer
An abridged version
Translated from the Anglo-Saxon
The Seafarer
Oft I alone must 8
Utter my sadness,
Each day before dawn.
Living there’s none,
No man, to whom
I’d clearly speak
My innermost mind.
I know among
Men the custom 12
Truly is noble,
That a man his
Thoughts fast bind,
Hiding his mind-hoard,
Whatever he thinks.
For weary spirit may not
Withstand fate’s ways,
Nor does a sad heart 16
Offer men aid.
Thus oft the glory-bound
Bind fast their
Drear thoughts
In their own breast.
So I, wandering,
Bereft of my homeland,
Far from my kinsmen, 20
Oft in wretchedness,
My innermost feelings
Am forced to fetter,
Over these long years
Since my lord I buried
Deep in the dark earth,
And from there, dully,
Went winter-freighted 24
Over the icy waves,
Seeking, hall-bereft,
Some giver of treasure;
Where I, far or near,
Might find one
In mead-hall, who
Knew my own clan,
Or might console me, 28
I, the friendless one,
Win with his welcome.
He who suffers it
Knows how sorrow
Makes cruel companion
To one who goes light
Of all loving friends.
Wandering wreathes him 32
Not the winding gold,
A frozen spirit, now,
Not the fruits of earth.
Halls of the warriors
He recalls, gold-giving:
How in youth his lord,
Ever treasure’s friend,
Won him to wining. 36
Dead now all joyfulness!
Thus he suffers it,
Who the true counsel
Of his own dear lord
Has long time forgone:
Then sleep and sorrow,
Working together,
Often will bind 40
The lonely sufferer.
He thinks there in mind,
That he his own lord
Clasps there and kisses,
And to his knees
Presses hand and head,
As when once before
In times gone by, 44
He held the throne.
Then he awakens,
A friendless man,
Seas before him
The barren waves,
Sea-birds bathing
Preening their feathers,
In rime and snow fall, 48
And hail there mingling.
Then are they heavier
Wounds of heart
Sore for its lord.
Sorrow succeeds
When mind surveys
Memories of kinsmen:
He greets them gladly, 52
Scans them eagerly,
A man’s companions,
Swimming ever away,
Seafaring spirits,
Bringing him little
Of their human speech.
The care is renewed
Of he who must send 56
Time after time
His weary heart
Out over wave’s ply.
Truly I know not
Why my spirit
Fails to darken
Seeing the whole
Earthly life of men 60
All the world over,
How swiftly they
Flee the stage,
The proud nobles.
So this middle-earth
Day by day
Decays and falls:
So no man can call 64
Himself wise, ere he’s aged
A deal of years in this world.
The wise must be patient,
Not too impulsive,
Not too hasty of word,
Nor too weak a warrior,
Nor too recklessly wild,
Nor too fearful, too hopeful, 68
Nor too greedy for gifts,
Nor too ready to boast,
Before he knows clearly.
A man shall abide
Before he speaks oaths,
Until proud-hearted
He sees clearly
Where the intent 72
Of his heart will tend.
The wise man must see,
How all will be ghastly,
When all the weal of this
World lies wasted,
As now here and there
Over this middle-earth,
Wind-beaten 76
The walls stand
Rime be-frosted,
Buildings storm-swept.
The halls are broken,
Warrior lords lie
Bereft of delight.
Fallen the throng,
Proud by the wall. 80
Some war wasted,
Ferried on their way,
Him the bird took
Beyond the deep seas,
Him the grey wolf
Garnered for death,
Him all dreary
Man hid in an 84
Earthly grave.
So He who made men
Shattered the city,
Till empty of sound,
Its citizens silent
The old work of giants
Stood empty.
One who in wisdom 88
Pondered this estate,
And of this dark life
Considered deeply
Knowing in spirit,
Oft thought from afar
Of countless conflicts,
Speaking these words:
Where is the horse now? Where is the rider? 92
Where is the gold-giver?
Where is the seat at the gathering?
Where now are the feasts in the halls?
Alas for the gleaming cup!
Alas the mailed warrior!
Alas for the prince’s pride!
How that age has passed,
Dark under night-helm, 96
As though it never were!
Now there stands at last
Where were the dear host,
A wall wondrous high
Wound with serpents.
The warriors were taken
By the spear’s glory,
Weapons ripe for kill, 100
Fame of the fated;
These cliffs of stone
Storms batter,
Falling frost
Earth fetters,
Promise of winter;
Then comes darkness,
Night-shadows deepen, 104
From the north descends
Fierce hail,
Malicious to men.
All is sorrowful
In this earthly realm,
The wheel of fate alters
World under heavens.
Here be gold fleeting, 108
Here be friend fleeting,
Here be man fleeting,
Here be kin fleeting,
All this Earth’s estate,
Idle, is wasted!
The Wanderer
Comments
Date and form
The poem may predate the manuscript by hundreds of years. Some scholars believe that the poem was composed around the time the Anglo-Saxons were making the conversion to Christianity, sometime around 597, though others would date it as much as several centuries later.
The meter of the poem is of four-stress lines, divided between the second and third stresses by a caesura. Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative metre.
Contents
The Wanderer conveys the meditations of a solitary exile on his past glories as a warrior in his lord's band of retainers, his present hardships and the values of forbearance and faith in the heavenly Lord. The warrior is identified as eardstapa (line 6a), usually translated as "wanderer", who roams the cold seas and walks "paths of exile" (wræclastas). He remembers the days when he served his lord, feasted together with comrades, and received precious gifts from the lord. Yet fate (wyrd) turned against him when he lost his lord, kinsmen and comrades in battle and was driven into exile.
However, the speaker reflects upon life while spending years in exile, and to some extent has gone beyond his personal sorrow. In this respect, the poem is a "wisdom poem." The degeneration of “earthly glory” is presented as inevitable in the poem, contrasting with the theme of salvation through faith in God.
The wanderer vividly describes his loneliness and yearning for the bright days past, and concludes with an admonition to put faith in God, "in whom all stability dwells". It has been argued by some scholars that this admonition is a later addition, as it lies at the end of a poem that some would say is otherwise entirely secular in its concerns; but inasmuch as many of the words in the poem have both secular and spiritual or religious meanings, the foundation of this argument is not on firm ground.
The psychological or spiritual progress of the wanderer has been described as an "act of courage of one sitting alone in meditation", who through embracing the values of Christianity seeks "a meaning beyond the temporary and transitory meaning of earthly values".[1]
Themes and meaning
The Wanderer is possibly the most debated Old English poem in terms of its meaning, origin, and even the translation of various ambiguous words.
Three notable elements of the poem are the use of the "beasts of battle" motif,[2] the ubi sunt formula, and the siþ-motif.
The "beasts of battle" motif is here modified to include not only the standard eagle, raven and wolf, but also a "sad-faced man". It has been suggested that this is the poem's protagonist. The ubi sunt or "where is" formula is here in the form "hwær cwom", the Old English phrase "where has gone". The use of this emphasises the sense of loss that pervades the poem.
The preoccupation with the siþ-motif in Anglo-Saxon literature is matched in many post-Conquest texts where journeying is central to the text. A necessarily brief survey of the corpus might include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and William Golding's Rites of Passage. Not only do we find physical journeying within The Wanderer and those later texts, but a sense in which the journey is responsible for a visible transformation in the mind of the character making the journey
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is like no other period in The Norton Anthology of English Literature in terms of the time span it covers. Caedmon's Hymn, the earliest English poem to survive as a text (NAEL 8, 1.25-27), belongs to the latter part of the seventh century. The morality play, Everyman, is dated "after 1485" and probably belongs to the early-sixteenth century. In addition, for the Middle Ages, there is no one central movement or event such as the English Reformation, the Civil War, or the Restoration around which to organize a historical approach to the period.
When did "English Literature" begin? Any answer to that question must be problematic, for the very concept of English literature is a construction of literary history, a concept that changed over time. There are no "English" characters in Beowulf, and English scholars and authors had no knowledge of the poem before it was discovered and edited in the nineteenth century. Although written in the language called "Anglo-Saxon," the poem was claimed by Danish and German scholars as their earliest national epic before it came to be thought of as an "Old English" poem. One of the results of the Norman Conquest was that the structure and vocabulary of the English language changed to such an extent that Chaucer, even if he had come across a manuscript of Old English poetry, would have experienced far more difficulty construing the language than with medieval Latin, French, or Italian. If a King Arthur had actually lived, he would have spoken a Celtic language possibly still intelligible to native speakers of Middle Welsh but not to Middle English speakers.
The literary culture of the Middle Ages was far more international than national and was divided more by lines of class and audience than by language. Latin was the language of the Church and of learning. After the eleventh century, French became the dominant language of secular European literary culture. Edward, the Prince of Wales, who took the king of France prisoner at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, had culturally more in common with his royal captive than with the common people of England. And the legendary King Arthur was an international figure. Stories about him and his knights originated in Celtic poems and tales and were adapted and greatly expanded in Latin chronicles and French romances even before Arthur became an English hero.
Chaucer was certainly familiar with poetry that had its roots in the Old English period. He read popular romances in Middle English, most of which derive from more sophisticated French and Italian sources. But when he began writing in the 1360s and 1370s, he turned directly to French and Italian models as well as to classical poets (especially Ovid). English poets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries looked upon Chaucer and his contemporary John Gower as founders of English literature, as those who made English a language fit for cultivated readers. In the Renaissance, Chaucer was referred to as the "English Homer." Spenser called him the "well of English undefiled."
Nevertheless, Chaucer and his contemporaries Gower, William Langland, and the Gawain poet — all writing in the latter third of the fourteenth century — are heirs to classical and medieval cultures that had been evolving for many centuries. Cultures is put in the plural deliberately, for there is a tendency, even on the part of medievalists, to think of the Middle Ages as a single culture epitomized by the Great Gothic cathedrals in which architecture, art, music, and liturgy seem to join in magnificent expressions of a unified faith — an approach one recent scholar has referred to as "cathedralism." Such a view overlooks the diversity of medieval cultures and the social, political, religious, economic, and technological changes that took place over this vastly long period.
The texts included here from "The Middle Ages" attempt to convey that diversity. They date from the sixth to the late- fifteenth century. Eight were originally in Old French, six in Latin, five in English, two in Old Saxon, two in Old Icelandic, and one each in Catalan, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic.
"The Linguistic and Literary Contexts of Beowulf" demonstrates the kinship of the Anglo-Saxon poem with the versification and literature of other early branches of the Germanic language group. An Anglo-Saxon poet who was writing an epic based on the book of Genesis was able to insert into his work the episodes of the fall of the angels and the fall of man that he adapted with relatively minor changes from an Old Saxon poem thought to have been lost until a fragment from it was found late in the nineteenth century in the Vatican Library. Germanic mythology and legend preserved in Old Icelandic literature centuries later than Beowulf provide us with better insights into stories known to the poet than anything in ancient Greek and Roman epic poetry.
"Estates and Orders" samples ideas about medieval society and some of its members and institutions. Particular attention is given to religious orders and to the ascetic ideals that were supposed to rule the lives of men and women living in religious communities (such as Chaucer's Prioress, Monk, and Friar, who honor those rules more in the breach than in the observance) and anchorites (such as Julian of Norwich) living apart. The Rule of Saint Benedict, written for a sixth-century religious community, can serve the modern reader as a guidebook to the ideals and daily practices of monastic life. The mutual influence of those ideals and new aristocratic ideals of chivalry is evident in the selection from the Ancrene Riwle (Rule for Anchoresses, NAEL 8, [1.157–159]) and The Book of the Order of Chivalry. Though medieval social theory has little to say about women, women were sometimes treated satirically as if they constituted their own estate and profession in rebellion against the divinely ordained rule of men. An outstanding instance is the "Old Woman" from the Romance of the Rose, whom Chaucer reinvented as the Wife of Bath. The tenth-century English Benedictine monk Aelfric gives one of the earliest formulations of the theory of three estates — clergy, nobles, and commoners — working harmoniously together. But the deep- seated resentment between the upper and lower estates flared up dramatically in the Uprising of 1381 and is revealed by the slogans of the rebels, which are cited here in selections from the chronicles of Henry Knighton and Thomas Walsingham, and by the attack of the poet John Gower on the rebels in his Vox Clamantis. In the late-medieval genre of estates satire, all three estates are portrayed as selfishly corrupting and disrupting a mythical social order believed to have prevailed in a past happier age.
The selections under "Arthur and Gawain" trace how French writers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries transformed the Legendary Histories of Britain (NAEL 8 , 1.117–128) into the narrative genre that we now call "romance." The works of Chrétien de Troyes focus on the adventures of individual knights of the Round Table and how those adventures impinge upon the cult of chivalry. Such adventures often take the form of a quest to achieve honor or what Sir Thomas Malory often refers to as "worship." But in romance the adventurous quest is often entangled, for better or for worse, with personal fulfillment of love for a lady — achieving her love, protecting her honor, and, in rare cases such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, resisting a lady's advances. In the thirteenth century, clerics turned the sagas of Arthur and his knights — especially Sir Lancelot — into immensely long prose romances that disparaged worldly chivalry and the love of women and advocated spiritual chivalry and sexual purity. These were the "French books" that Malory, as his editor and printer William Caxton tells us, "abridged into English," and gave them the definitive form from which Arthurian literature has survived in poetry, prose, art, and film into modern times.
"The First Crusade," launched in 1096, was the first in a series of holy wars that profoundly affected the ideology and culture of Christian Europe. Preached by Pope Urban II, the aim of the crusade was to unite warring Christian factions in the common goal of liberating the Holy Land from its Moslem rulers. The chronicle of Robert the Monk is one of several versions of Urban's address. The Hebrew chronicle of Eliezer bar Nathan gives a moving account of attacks made by some of the crusaders on Jewish communities in the Rhineland — the beginnings of the persecution of European Jews in the later Middle Ages. In the biography of her father, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I, the princess Anna Comnena provides us with still another perspective of the leaders of the First Crusade whom she met on their passage through Constantinople en route to the Holy Land. The taking of Jerusalem by the crusaders came to be celebrated by European writers of history and epic poetry as one of the greatest heroic achievements of all times. The accounts by the Arab historian Ibn Al-Athir and by William of Tyre tell us what happened after the crusaders breached the walls of Jerusalem from complementary but very different points of view.
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342 - 1400)
General Prologue: Introduction
|Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote° | |sweet showers |
|The droghte° of Marche hath perced to the rote,° | |dryness / root |
|And bathed every veyne° in swich licour,° | |vein / such moisture |
|Of which vertu° engendred is the flour; | |By power of which |
|Whan Zephirus° eek with his swete breeth | |the west wind |
|Inspired° hath in every holt° and heeth° | |Breathed into / wood / heath |
|The tendre croppes,° and the yonge sonne | |sprouts |
|Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne;1 | |Ram y-ronne1 |
|And smale fowles° maken melodye, | |birds |
|That slepen al the night with open yë°— | |eye(s) |
|So priketh hem Nature in hir corages2— | |Nature corages2 |
|Than longen° folk to goon° on pilgrimages, | |Then long / go |
|And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,3 | |And strondes3 |
|To ferne halwes,° couthe° in sondry londes; | |far-off shires /known |
|And specially, from every shires ende | | |
|Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, | | |
|The holy blisful martir4 for to seke,° | |seek |
|That hem hath holpen,° whan that they were seke.° | |helped / sick |
| | | |
| Bifel° that, in that seson on a day, | |It befell |
|In Southwerk at the Tabard° as I lay° | |(an inn) / lodged |
|Redy to wenden° on my pilgrimage | |depart |
|To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,° | |heart |
|At night was come into that hostelrye° | |inn |
|Wel nyne and twenty in a companye, | | |
|Of sondry folk, by aventure° y-falle° | |chance / fallen |
|In felaweshipe, and pilgrims were they alle, | | |
|That toward Caunterbury wolden° ryde. | |[pic] |
|The chambres° and the stables weren wyde,° | |wished to |
|And wel we weren esed° atte beste.° | |bedrooms / spacious |
|And shortly, whan the sonne was to° reste, | |made comfortable / in the best (ways) |
|So hadde I spoken with hem everichon° | |at |
|That I was of hir felawshipe anon, | |each and every one |
|And made forward° erly for to ryse, | | |
|To take oure wey, ther as I yow devyse.° | |agreement |
| | |(will) tell |
| But natheles,° whyl I have tyme and space, | | |
|Er that I ferther in this tale pace,° | |nevertheless |
|Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun5 | |pass on |
|To telle yow al the condicioun6 | | |
|Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,° | | |
|And whiche° they weren, and of what degree,° | |seemed to me |
|And eek in what array° that they were inne; | |what / status |
|And at a knight than wol° I first biginne. | |clothing |
| | |will |
| |
|Has run his half-course in the Ram; i.e., has passed through half the zodiacal sign of |
|Aries (the Ram), a course completed on April 11. A rhetorically decorative way of |
|indicating the time of year. |
|Nature so spurs them in their hearts. |
|And pilgrims to seek foreign shores. |
|Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in 1170 and canonized shortly |
|thereafter. The place of his martyrdom was the greatest shrine in England and much |
|visited by pilgrims. |
|It seems to me reasonable (proper). |
|Character, estate, condition. |
Fragment I, lines 1–42
Summary
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . .
The narrator opens the General Prologue with a description of the return of spring. He describes the April rains, the burgeoning flowers and leaves, and the chirping birds. Around this time of year, the narrator says, people begin to feel the desire to go on a pilgrimage. Many devout English pilgrims set off to visit shrines in distant holy lands, but even more choose to travel to Canterbury to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, where they thank the martyr for having helped them when they were in need. The narrator tells us that as he prepared to go on such a pilgrimage, staying at a tavern in Southwark called the Tabard Inn, a great company of twenty-nine travelers entered. The travelers were a diverse group who, like the narrator, were on their way to Canterbury. They happily agreed to let him join them. That night, the group slept at the Tabard, and woke up early the next morning to set off on their journey. Before continuing the tale, the narrator declares his intent to list and describe each of the members of the group.
Analysis
The invocation of spring with which the General Prologue begins is lengthy and formal compared to the language of the rest of the Prologue. The first lines situate the story in a particular time and place, but the speaker does this in cosmic and cyclical terms, celebrating the vitality and richness of spring. This approach gives the opening lines a dreamy, timeless, unfocused quality, and it is therefore surprising when the narrator reveals that he's going to describe a pilgrimage that he himself took rather than telling a love story. A pilgrimage is a religious journey undertaken for penance and grace. As pilgrimages went, Canterbury was not a very difficult destination for an English person to reach. It was, therefore, very popular in fourteenth-century England, as the narrator mentions. Pilgrims traveled to visit the remains of Saint Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in 1170 by knights of King Henry II. Soon after his death, he became the most popular saint in England. The pilgrimage in The Canterbury Tales should not be thought of as an entirely solemn occasion, because it also offered the pilgrims an opportunity to abandon work and take a vacation.
At line 20, the narrator abandons his unfocused, all-knowing point of view, identifying himself as an actual person for the first time by inserting the first person—“I”—as he relates how he met the group of pilgrims while staying at the Tabard Inn. He emphasizes that this group, which he encountered by accident, was itself formed quite by chance (25–26). He then shifts into the first-person plural, referring to the pilgrims as “we” beginning in line 29, asserting his status as a member of the group.
The narrator ends the introductory portion of his prologue by noting that he has “tyme and space” to tell his narrative. His comments underscore the fact that he is writing some time after the events of his story, and that he is describing the characters from memory. He has spoken and met with these people, but he has waited a certain length of time before sitting down and describing them. His intention to describe each pilgrim as they seemed to him is also important, for it emphasizes that his descriptions are not only subject to his memory but are also shaped by his individual perceptions and opinions regarding each of the characters. He positions himself as a mediator between two groups: the group of pilgrims of which he was a member and us, the audience, whom the narrator explicitly addresses as “you” in lines 34 and 38.
On the other hand, the narrator's declaration that he will tell us about the “condicioun,” “degree,” and “array” (dress) of each of the pilgrims suggests that his portraits will be based on objective facts as well as his own opinions. He spends considerable time characterizing the group members according to their social positions. The pilgrims represent a diverse cross section of fourteenth-century English society. Medieval social theory divided society into three broad classes, called “estates”: the military, the clergy, and the laity. (The nobility, not represented in the General Prologue, traditionally derives its title and privileges from military duties and service, so it is considered part of the military estate.) In the portraits that we will see in the rest of the General Prologue, the Knight and Squire represent the military estate. The clergy is represented by the Prioress (and her nun and three priests), the Monk, the Friar, and the Parson. The other characters, from the wealthy Franklin to the poor Plowman, are the members of the laity. These lay characters can be further subdivided into landowners (the Franklin), professionals (the Clerk, the Man of Law, the Guildsmen, the Physician, and the Shipman), laborers (the Cook, the Plowman), stewards (the Miller, the Manciple, and the Reeve), and church officers (the Summoner and Pardoner). As we will see, Chaucer's descriptions of the various characters and their social roles reveal the influence of the medieval genre of estates satire.
THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE OF THE COCK AND HEN, CHANTICLEER AND PERTELOTE
A widow poor, somewhat advanced in age,
Lived, on a time, within a small cottage
Beside a grove and standing down a dale.
This widow, now, of whom I tell my tale,
Since that same day when she'd been last a wife
Had led, with patience, her strait simple life,
For she'd small goods and little income-rent;
By husbanding of such as God had sent
She kept herself and her young daughters twain.
Three large sows had she, and no more, 'tis plain,
Three cows and a lone sheep that she called Moll.
Right sooty was her bedroom and her hall,
Wherein she'd eaten many a slender meal.
Of sharp sauce, why she needed no great deal,
For dainty morsel never passed her throat;
Her diet well accorded with her coat.
Repletion never made this woman sick;
A temperate diet was her whole physic,
And exercise, and her heart's sustenance.
The gout, it hindered her nowise to dance,
Nor apoplexy spun within her head;
And no wine drank she, either white or red;
Her board was mostly garnished, white and black,
With milk and brown bread, whereof she'd no lack,
Broiled bacon and sometimes an egg or two,
For a small dairy business did she do.
A yard she had, enclosed all roundabout
With pales, and there was a dry ditch without,
And in the yard a cock called Chanticleer.
In all the land, for crowing, he'd no peer.
His voice was merrier than the organ gay
On Mass days, which in church begins to play;
More regular was his crowing in his lodge
Than is a clock or abbey horologe.
By instinct he'd marked each ascension down
Of equinoctial value in that town;
For when fifteen degrees had been ascended,
Then crew he so it might not be amended.
His comb was redder than a fine coral,
And battlemented like a castle wall.
Summary: The Tale of the Nun's Priest
A poor, elderly widow lives a simple life in a cottage with her two daughters. Her few possessions include three sows, three cows, a sheep, and some chickens. One chicken, her rooster, is named Chanticleer, which in French means “sings clearly.” True to his name, Chanticleer's “cock-a-doodle-doo” makes him the master of all roosters. He crows the hour more accurately than any church clock. His crest is redder than fine coral, his beak is black as jet, his nails whiter than lilies, and his feathers shine like burnished gold. Understandably, such an attractive cock would have to be the Don Juan of the barnyard. Chanticleer has many hen-wives, but he loves most truly a hen named Pertelote. She is as lovely as Chanticleer is magnificent.
As Chanticleer, Pertelote, and all of Chanticleer's ancillary hen-wives are roosting one night, Chanticleer has a terrible nightmare about an orange houndlike beast who threatens to kill him while he is in the yard. Fearless Pertelote berates him for letting a dream get the better of him. She believes the dream to be the result of some physical malady, and she promises him that she will find some purgative herbs. She urges him once more not to dread something as fleeting and illusory as a dream. In order to convince her that his dream was important, he tells the stories of men who dreamed of murder and then discovered it. His point in telling these stories is to prove to Pertelote that “Mordre will out” (3052)—murder will reveal itself—even and especially in dreams. Chanticleer cites textual examples of famous dream interpretations to further support his thesis that dreams are portentous
One day in May, Chanticleer has just declared his perfect happiness when a wave of sadness passes over him. That very night, a hungry fox stalks Chanticleer and his wives, watching their every move. The next day, Chanticleer notices the fox while watching a butterfly, and the fox confronts him with dissimulating courtesy, telling the rooster not to be afraid. Chanticleer relishes the fox's flattery of his singing. He beats his wings with pride, stands on his toes, stretches his neck, closes his eyes, and crows loudly. The fox reaches out and grabs Chanticleer by the throat, and then slinks away with him back toward the woods. No one is around to witness what has happened. Once Pertelote finds out what has happened, she burns her feathers with grief, and a great wail arises from the henhouse.
The widow and her daughters hear the screeching and spy the fox running away with the rooster. The dogs follow, and pretty soon the whole barnyard joins in the hullabaloo. Chanticleer very cleverly suggests that the fox turn and boast to his pursuers. The fox opens his mouth to do so, and Chanticleer flies out of the fox's mouth and into a high tree. The fox tries to flatter the bird into coming down, but Chanticleer has learned his lesson. He tells the fox that flattery will work for him no more. The moral of the story, concludes the Nun's Priest, is never to trust a flatterer.
Middle English Lyrics
Middle English lyric is a genre of English Literature, popular in the 14th Century, that is characterized by its brevity and emotional expression. Conventionally, the lyric expresses "a moment," usually spoken or performed in the first person. Although some lyrics have narratives, the plots are usually simple to emphasize an occasional, common experience. Even though Lyrics appear individual and personal, they are not "original;" instead, lyrics express a common state of mind. Middle English Lyrics were meant to be heard, not read. Keeping in mind an aural audience, the lyric is usually structured with an obvious rhyme scheme, refrain, and sometimes musical effects. The rhyme scheme primarily functions as a mnemonic device for the audience. The Refrain, however, has several critical functions. The Refrain gives the lyric unity and provides commentary (this is not unlike the bob and wheel found in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). In addition to functioning thematically, the refrain encourages audience to participate in singing the lyric. Finally, Musical Effects also encourage audience participation, and they take the form of rhythms and sounds (for example, onomatopoeia is not an uncommon trope employed).
Most Middle English Lyrics are anonymous. Because the lyrics reflect on a sort of "community property" of ideas, the concept of copyrighting a lyric to a particular author is usually inappropriate. Additionally, identifying authors is very difficult. Most lyrics are often un-dateable, and they appear in collections with no apparent organic unity. It is most likely many lyrics that survive today were widely recited in various forms before being written down. Evidence for this appears in a variety of Middle English poetry, especially Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Many of Chaucer's lines bear an uncanny resemblance to Middle English Lyrics.
| |[pic] |
| |Dionisio Minaggio, 1618. |
| |McGill University Library |
| | |
| | |
| |Cuckoo Song |
| |[Brit. Lib. MS Harley 978, f. 11v] |
| |Sumer is ycomen in, | | |
| |Loude sing cuckou! | | |
| |Groweth seed and bloweth meed, | |meadow blossoms |
| |And springth the wode now. | |wood |
|5 |Sing cuckou! | | |
| | | | |
| |Ewe bleteth after lamb, | | |
| |Loweth after calve cow, | | |
| |Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth, | |leaps/farts |
| |Merye sing cuckou! | | |
|10 |Cuckou, cuckou, | | |
| |Wel singest thou cuckou: | | |
| |Ne swik thou never now! | |cease |
|[pic] |
|The Month of April. |
|Livre d'heures à l'usage de Rome. |
|Rés B 496344, f. A3v-4. |
|Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon. |
| |
| |
| |
|Alison |
| |Bitweene Merch and Averil, | |in the seasons of |
| |When spray biginneth to springe, | | |
| |The litel fowl hath hire wil | |pleasure |
| |On hire leod to singe. | |In her language |
|5 |Ich libbe in love-longinge | |I live |
| |For semlokest of alle thinge. | |seemliest, fairest |
| |Heo may me blisse bringe: | |she |
| |Ich am in hire baundoun. | |power |
| |An hendy hap ich habbe yhent, | |A gracious chance I have received |
|10 |Ichoot from hevene it is me sent: | |I know |
| |From alle wommen my love is lent, | |all other/removed |
| |And light on Alisoun. | |alights |
| | | | |
| |On hew hire heer is fair ynough, | |hue/hair |
| |Hire browe browne, hire yën blake; | |eyes |
|15 |With lossum cheere heo on me lough; | |With lovely face she on me smiled |
| |With middel smal and wel ymake. | | |
| |But heo me wolle to hire take | |Unless |
| |For to been hire owen make, | |mate |
| |Longe to liven ichulle forsake, | |I will |
|20 |And feye fallen adown. | |dead |
| |An hendy hap, etc. | | |
| | | | |
| |Nightes when I wende and wake, | |turn |
| |Forthy mine wonges waxeth wan: | |therefore/cheeks |
| |Levedy, al for thine sake | |lady |
|25 |Longinge is ylent me on. | |Longing has come upon me |
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|30 | | | |
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|35 | | | |
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16th Century Renaissance English Literature (1485-1603)
General Characteristics of the Renaissance
"Renaissance" literally means "rebirth." It refers especially to the rebirth of learning that began in Italy in the fourteenth century, spread to the north, including England, by the sixteenth century, and ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth century (earlier in Italy). During this period, there was an enormous renewal of interest in and study of classical antiquity.
Yet the Renaissance was more than a "rebirth." It was also an age of new discoveries, both geographical (exploration of the New World) and intellectual. Both kinds of discovery resulted in changes of tremendous import for Western civilization. In science, for example, Copernicus (1473-1543) attempted to prove that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the planetary system, thus radically altering the cosmic world view that had dominated antiquity and the Middle Ages. In religion, Martin Luther (1483-1546) challenged and ultimately caused the division of one of the major institutions that had united Europe throughout the Middle Ages--the Church. In fact, Renaissance thinkers often thought of themselves as ushering in the modern age, as distinct from the ancient and medieval eras.
Study of the Renaissance might well center on five interrelated issues. First, although Renaissance thinkers often tried to associate themselves with classical antiquity and to dissociate themselves from the Middle Ages, important continuities with their recent past, such as belief in the Great Chain of Being, were still much in evidence. Second, during this period, certain significant political changes were taking place. Third, some of the noblest ideals of the period were best expressed by the movement known as Humanism. Fourth, and connected to Humanist ideals, was the literary doctrine of "imitation," important for its ideas about how literary works should be created. Finally, what later probably became an even more far-reaching influence, both on literary creation and on modern life in general, was the religious movement known as the Reformation.
Renaissance thinkers strongly associated themselves with the values of classical antiquity, particularly as expressed in the newly rediscovered classics of literature, history, and moral philosophy. Conversely, they tended to dissociate themselves from works written in the Middle Ages, a historical period they looked upon rather negatively. According to them, the Middle Ages were set in the "middle" of two much more valuable historical periods, antiquity and their own. Nevertheless, as modern scholars have noted, extremely important continuities with the previous age still existed.
The Great Chain of Being
Among the most important of the continuities with the Classical period was the concept of the Great Chain of Being. Its major premise was that every existing thing in the universe had its "place" in a divinely planned hierarchical order, which was pictured as a chain vertically extended. ("Hierarchical" refers to an order based on a series of higher and lower, strictly ranked gradations.) An object's "place" depended on the relative proportion of "spirit" and "matter" it contained--the less "spirit" and the more "matter," the lower down it stood. At the bottom, for example, stood various types of inanimate objects, such as metals, stones, and the four elements (earth, water, air, fire). Higher up were various members of the vegetative class, like trees and flowers. Then came animals; then humans; and then angels. At the very top was God. Then within each of these large groups, there were other hierarchies. For example, among metals, gold was the noblest and stood highest; lead had less "spirit" and more matter and so stood lower. (Alchemy was based on the belief that lead could be changed to gold through an infusion of "spirit.") The various species of plants, animals, humans, and angels were similarly ranked from low to high within their respective segments. Finally, it was believed that between the segments themselves, there was continuity (shellfish were lowest among animals and shaded into the vegetative class, for example, because without locomotion, they most resembled plants).
Besides universal orderliness, there was universal interdependence. This was implicit in the doctrine of "correspondences," which held that different segments of the chain reflected other segments. For example, Renaissance thinkers viewed a human being as a microcosm (literally, a "little world") that reflected the structure of the world as a whole, the macrocosm; just as the world was composed of four "elements" (earth, water, air, fire), so too was the human body composed of four substances called "humours," with characteristics corresponding to the four elements. (Illness occurred when there was an imbalance or "disorder" among the humours, that is, when they did not exist in proper proportion to each other.) "Correspondences" existed everywhere, on many levels. Thus the hierarchical organization of the mental faculties was also thought of as reflecting the hierarchical order within the family, the state, and the forces of nature. When things were properly ordered, reason ruled the emotions, just as a king ruled his subjects, the parent ruled the child, and the sun governed the planets. But when disorder was present in one realm, it was correspondingly reflected in other realms. For example, in Shakespeare's King Lear, the simultaneous disorder in family relationships and in the state (child ruling parent, subject ruling king) is reflected in the disorder of Lear's mind (the loss of reason) as well as in the disorder of nature (the raging storm). Lear even equates his loss of reason to "a tempest in my mind."
Though Renaissance writers seemed to be quite on the side of "order," the theme of "disorder" is much in evidence, suggesting that the age may have been experiencing some growing discomfort with traditional hierarchies. According to the chain of being concept, all existing things have their precise place and function in the universe, and to depart from one's proper place was to betray one's nature. Human beings, for example, were pictured as placed between the beasts and the angels. To act against human nature by not allowing reason to rule the emotions--was to descend to the level of the beasts. In the other direction, to attempt to go above one's proper place, as Eve did when she was tempted by Satan, was to court disaster. Yet Renaissance writers at times showed ambivalence towards such a rigidly organized universe. For example, the Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola, in a work entitled On the Dignity of Man, exalted human beings as capable of rising to the level of the angels through philosophical contemplation. Also, some Renaissance writers were fascinated by the thought of going beyond boundaries set by the chain of being. A major example was the title character of Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus. Simultaneously displaying the grand spirit of human aspiration and the more questionable hunger for superhuman powers, Faustus seems in the play to be both exalted and punished. Marlowe's drama, in fact, has often been seen as the embodiment of Renaissance ambiguity in this regard, suggesting both its fear of and its fascination with pushing beyond human limitations.
Political Implications of the Chain of Being
The fear of "disorder" was not merely philosophical--it had significant political ramifications. The proscription against trying to rise beyond one's place was of course useful to political rulers, for it helped to reinforce their authority. The implication was that civil rebellion caused the chain to be broken, and according to the doctrine of correspondences, this would have dire consequences in other realms. It was a sin against God, at least wherever rulers claimed to rule by "Divine Right." (And in England, the King was also the head of the Anglican Church.) In Shakespeare, it was suggested that the sin was of cosmic proportions: civil disorders were often accompanied by meteoric disturbances in the heavens. (Before Halley's theory about periodic orbits, comets, as well as meteors, were thought to be disorderly heavenly bodies.)
The need for strong political rule was in fact very significant, for the Renaissance had brought an end for the most part to feudalism, the medieval form of political organization. The major political accomplishment of the Renaissance, perhaps, was the establishment of effective central government, not only in the north but in the south as well. Northern Europe saw the rise of national monarchies headed by kings, especially in England and France. Italy saw the rise of the territorial city-state often headed by wealthy oligarchic families. Not only did the chain of being concept provide a rationale for the authority of such rulers; it also suggested that there was ideal behavior that was appropriate to their place in the order of things. It is no wonder then that much Renaissance literature is concerned with the ideals of kingship, with the character and behavior of rulers, as in Machiavelli's Prince or Shakespeare's Henry V.
Other ideals and values that were represented in the literature were even more significant. It was the intellectual movement known as Humanism that may have expressed most fully the values of the Renaissance and made a lasting contribution to our own culture.
Humanism
A common oversimplification of Humanism suggests that it gave renewed emphasis to life in this world instead of to the otherworldly, spiritual life associated with the Middle Ages. Oversimplified as it is, there is nevertheless truth to the idea that Renaissance Humanists placed great emphasis upon the dignity of man and upon the expanded possibilities of human life in this world. For the most part, it regarded human beings as social creatures who could create meaningful lives only in association with other social beings.
In the terms used in the Renaissance itself, Humanism represented a shift from the "contemplative life" to the "active life." In the Middle Ages, great value had often been attached to the life of contemplation and religious devotion, away from the world (though this ideal applied to only a small number of people). In the Renaissance, the highest cultural values were usually associated with active involvement in public life, in moral, political, and military action, and in service to the state. Of course, the traditional religious values coexisted with the new secular values; in fact, some of the most important Humanists, like Erasmus, were Churchmen. Also, individual achievement, breadth of knowledge, and personal aspiration (as personified by Doctor Faustus) were valued. The concept of the "Renaissance Man" refers to an individual who, in addition to participating actively in the affairs of public life, possesses knowledge of and skill in many subject areas. (Such figures included Leonardo Da Vinci and John Milton, as well as Francis Bacon, who had declared, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province.") Nevertheless, individual aspiration was not the major concern of Renaissance Humanists, who focused rather on teaching people how to participate in and rule a society (though only the nobility and some members of the middle class were included in this ideal). Overall, in consciously attempting to revive the thought and culture of classical antiquity, perhaps the most important value the Humanists extracted from their studies of classical literature, history, and moral philosophy was the social nature of humanity.
"Imitation"
Another concept derived from the classical past (though it was present in the Middle Ages too), was the literary doctrine of "imitation." Of the two senses in which the term had traditionally been used, the theoretical emphasis of Renaissance literary critics was less on the "imitation" that meant "mirroring life" and more on the "imitation" that meant "following predecessors." In contrast to our own emphasis on "originality," the goal was not to create something entirely new. To a great extent, contemporary critics believed that the great literary works expressing definitive moral values had already been written in classical antiquity.
Theoretically, then, it was the task of the writer to translate for present readers the moral vision of the past, and they were to do this by "imitating" great works, adapting them to a Christian perspective and milieu. (Writers of the Middle Ages also practiced "imitation" in this sense, but did not have as many classical models to work from.) Of course Renaissance literary critics made it clear that such "imitation" was to be neither mechanical nor complete: writers were to capture the spirit of the originals, mastering the best models, learning from them, then using them for their own purposes. Nevertheless, despite the fact that there were a great many comments by critics about "imitation" in this sense, it was not the predominant practice of many of the greatest writers. For them, the faithful depiction of human behavior--what Shakespeare called holding the mirror up to nature--was paramount, and therefore "imitation" in the mimetic sense was more often the common practice.
The doctrine of "imitation" of ancient authors did have one very important effect: since it recommended not only the imitation of specific classical writers, but also the imitation of classical genres, there was a revival of significant literary forms. Among the most popular that were derived from antiquity were epic and satire. Even more important were the dramatic genres of comedy and tragedy. In fact, Europe at this time experienced a golden age of theater, led by great dramatists such as Shakespeare.
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
|[pic] |
THE LOVER SENDETH SIGHS TO MOVE
[pic]
HIS SUIT.1
|O, burning sighs, unto the frozen heart, |
| To break the ice, which pity's painful |
| dart |
|Might never pierce ; and if that mortal prayer |
|In heaven be heard, at least yet I desire |
|That death or mercy end my woful smart. |
|Take with thee pain, whereof I have my part, |
|And eke the flame from which I cannot start, |
|And leave me then in rest, I you require. |
|Go, burning sighs, fulfil that I desire, |
|I must go work, I see, by craft and art, |
|For truth and faith in her is laid apart : |
|Alas, I cannot therefore now assail her, |
|With pitiful complaint and scalding fire, |
|That from my breast deceivably doth start. |
| Go burning sighs ! |
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (1517?-1547)
Love that doth Reign and Live within my Thought
1Love that doth reign and live within my thought
2And built his seat within my captive breast,
3Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,
4Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.
5But she that taught me love and suffer pain,
6My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire
7With shamefast look to shadow and refrain,
8Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.
9And coward Love then to the heart apace
10Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and plain
11His purpose lost, and dare not show his face.
12For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I pain;
13Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:
14Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.
Notes
1] Tottel's title: "Complaint of a louer rebuked." His version opens: "Loue that liueth, and reigneth in my thought." Adapted from Petrarch's 140th (109th) sonnet. Cf. Wyatt's "The longe love," a translation of the same sonnet. 6.
eke: also.
6] eke: also.
7] shamefast: modest.
10] plain: complain.
12] bide: endure.
[pic]
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Nott, George Fred., ed. The Works of Henry Howard earl of Surrey and of Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder. London: Longman, 1815-16. 2 vols. PR 2370 A1 1815 ROBA.
First publication date: 1557
RPO poem editor: F. D. Hoeniger
RP edition: 3RP 1.13.
Recent editing: 4:2002/5/29
Form: Sonnet
Rhyme: ababcdcdececff
Sir Philip Sidney
(1554 - 1586) Sonnet 18
With what sharp checks I in myself am shent
When into reason's audit I do go,
And by just counts my self a bankrupt know
Of all those goods which heaven to me hath lent;
Unable quite to pay even nature's rent,
Which unto it by birthright I do owe;
And, which is worse, no good excuse can show,
But that my wealth I have most idly spent!
My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toys,
My wit doth strive those passions to defend,
Which, for reward, spoil it with vain annoys.
I see, my course to lose myself doth bend;
I see: and yet no greater sorrow take
Than that I lose no more for Stella's sake.
Edmund Spenser
(1552-1599)
Lyke as a ship that through the Ocean wyde,
By conduct of some star doth make her way,
Whenas a storme hath dimd her trusty guyde,
Out of her course doth wander far astray:
So I whose star, that wont with her bright ray
Me to direct, with cloudes is overcast,
Doe wander now in darknesse and dismay,
Through hidden perils round about me plast*. *(placed)
Yet hope I well, that when this storme is past
My Helice the lodestar* of my lyfe *(guiding star)
Will shine again, and looke on me at last,
With lovely light to cleare my cloudy grief.
Till then I wonder carefull comfortlesse*, *(full of cares)
In secret sorrow and sad pensivenesse.
My ship laden with forgetfulness passes through a harsh sea, at midnight, in winter, between Scylla and Charybdis, and at the tiller sits my lord, rather my enemy;
Each oar is manned by a ready, cruel thought that seems to scorn the tempest and the end; a wet, changeless wind of sighs, hopes, and desires breaks the sail;
A rain of weeping, a mist of disdain wet and loosen the already weary ropes, made of error twisted up in ignorance.
My two usual sweet stars are hidden; dead among the waves are reason and skill; so that I begin to despair of the port
-Petrarch, Rima 189 (a modern prose translation from the original Italian)
Edmund Spenser
(1552-1599) , Sonnet 75
| |
| |
|One day I wrote her name upon the strand, |
|But came the waves and washed it away: |
|Agayne I wrote it with a second hand, |
|But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray. |
|"Vayne man," sayd she, "that doest in vaine assay. |
|A mortall thing so to immortalize, |
|For I my selve shall lyke to this decay, |
|and eek my name bee wyped out lykewize." |
|"Not so," quod I, "let baser things devize, |
|To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame: |
|My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, |
|And in the heavens wryte your glorious name. |
|Where whenas death shall all the world subdew, |
|Our love shall live, and later life renew." |
| |
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The Seventeenth Century (1603-1660)
The earlier seventeenth century, and especially the period of the English Revolution (1640–60), was a time of intense ferment in all areas of life — religion, science, politics, domestic relations, culture. That ferment was reflected in the literature of the era, which also registered a heightened focus on and analysis of the self and the personal life. However, little of this seems in evidence in the elaborate frontispiece to Michael Drayton's long "chorographical" poem on the landscape, regions, and local history of Great Britain (1612), which appeared in the first years of the reign of the Stuart king James I (1603–1625). The frontispiece appears to represent a peaceful, prosperous, triumphant Britain, with England, Scotland, and Wales united, patriarchy and monarchy firmly established, and the nation serving as the great theme for lofty literary celebration. Albion (the Roman name for Britain) is a young and beautiful virgin wearing as cloak a map featuring rivers, trees, mountains, churches, towns; she carries a scepter and holds a cornucopia, symbol of plenty. Ships on the horizon signify exploration, trade, and garnering the riches of the sea. In the four corners stand four conquerors whose descendants ruled over Britain: the legendary Brutus, Julius Caesar, Hengist the Saxon, and the Norman William the Conqueror, "whose line yet rules," as Drayton's introductory poem states.
Yet this frontispiece also registers some of the tensions, conflicts, and redefinitions evident in the literature of the period and explored more directly in the topics and texts in this portion of the NTO Web site. It is Albion herself, not King James, who is seated in the center holding the emblems of sovereignty; her male conquerors stand to the side, and their smaller size and their number suggest something unstable in monarchy and patriarchy. Albion's robe with its multiplicity of regional features, as well as the "Poly" of the title, suggests forces pulling against national unity. Also, Poly-Olbion had no successors: instead of a celebration of the nation in the vein of Spenser's Faerie Queene or Poly-Olbion itself, the great seventeenth-century heroic poem, Paradise Lost, treats the Fall of Man and its tragic consequences, "all our woe."
The first topic here, "Gender, Family, Household: Seventeenth-Century Norms and Controversies," provides important religious, legal, and domestic advice texts through which to explore cultural assumptions about gender roles and the patriarchal family. It also invites attention to how those assumptions are modified or challenged in the practices of actual families and households; in tracts on transgressive subjects (cross-dressing, women speaking in church, divorce); in women's texts asserting women's worth, talents, and rights; and especially in the upheavals of the English Revolution.
"Paradise Lost in Context," the second topic for this period, surrounds that radically revisionist epic with texts that invite readers to examine how it engages with the interpretative traditions surrounding the Genesis story, how it uses classical myth, how it challenges orthodox notions of Edenic innocence, and how it is positioned within but also against the epic tradition from Homer to Virgil to Du Bartas. The protagonists here are not martial heroes but a domestic couple who must, both before and after their Fall, deal with questions hotly contested in the seventeenth century but also perennial: how to build a good marital relationship; how to think about science, astronomy, and the nature of things; what constitutes tyranny, servitude, and liberty; what history teaches; how to meet the daily challenges of love, work, education, change, temptation, and deceptive rhetoric; how to reconcile free will and divine providence; and how to understand and respond to God's ways.
The third topic, "Civil Wars of Ideas: Seventeenth-Century Politics, Religion, and Culture," provides an opportunity to explore, through political and polemical treatises and striking images, some of the issues and conflicts that led to civil war and the overthrow of monarchical government (1642–60). These include royal absolutism vs. parliamentary or popular sovereignty, monarchy vs. republicanism, Puritanism vs. Anglicanism, church ritual and ornament vs. iconoclasm, toleration vs. religious uniformity, and controversies over court masques and Sunday sports. The climax to all this was the highly dramatic trial and execution of King Charles I (January 1649), a cataclysmic event that sent shock waves through courts, hierarchical institutions, and traditionalists everywhere; this event is presented here through contemporary accounts and graphic images.
John Donne (1572 - 1631)
Song: Go and catch a falling star
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
`The Bard of Avon', English poet and playwright wrote the famous 154 Sonnets and numerous highly successful often quoted dramatic works including the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet;
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!"
--Lord Polonius, Hamlet Act I, Scene 3
While Shakespeare caused much controversy, he also earned lavish praise and has profoundly impacted the world over in areas of literature, culture, art, theatre, and film and is considered one of the best English language writers ever. From the Preface of the First Folio (1623) "To the memory of my beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: and what he hath left us"--Ben Jonson;
"Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give."
Over the centuries there has been much speculation surrounding various aspects of Shakespeare's life including his religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sources for collaborations, authorship of and chronology of the plays and sonnets. Many of the dates of play performances, when they were written, adapted or revised and printed are imprecise. This biography attempts only to give an overview of his life, while leaving the more learned perspectives to the countless scholars and historians who have devoted their lives to the study and demystification of the man and his works.
England's celebration of their patron Saint George is on 23 April, which is also the day claimed to be the birth date of Shakespeare. Although birth and death dates were not recorded in Shakespeare's time, churches did record baptisms and burials, usually a few days after the actual event. The infant William was baptised on 26 April 1564 in the parish church Holy Trinity of Stratford upon Avon. He lived with his fairly well-to-do parents on Henley Street, the first of the four sons born to John Shakespeare (c1530-1601) and Mary Arden (c1540-1608), who also had four daughters. John Shakespeare was a local businessman and also involved in municipal affairs as Alderman and Bailiff, but a decline in his fortunes in his later years surely had an effect on William.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (quotation)
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is the beginning of the third sentence of one of the most famous soliloquies in Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. It is the response of the protagonist, Macbeth, to the news of his wife's death. The speech can be divided into two parts, with the line "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" marking the beginning of the second part. The full soliloquy reads:
|"She should have died hereafter; |
|There would have been a time for such a word. |
|To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, |
|Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, |
|To the last syllable of recorded time; |
|And all our yesterdays have lighted fools |
|The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! |
|Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player |
|That struts and frets his hour upon the stage |
|And then is heard no more. It is a tale |
|Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury |
|Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28) |
Interpretation
The first sentence has caused much debate. Whether Macbeth was more concerned with the timing of his wife's death than the fact of her passing remains open to interpretation. The rest of the speech is a rush of despair. Macbeth is seeing life as a story, and death as a natural occurrence that is to be welcomed. He has seen so much death, and caused so much pain to others, that he has become numb to it. He no longer cares about anything, and wishes to die himself.
|Sonnet 18 |
|XVIII. |
|Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? |
|Thou art more lovely and more temperate: |
|Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, |
|And summer's lease hath all too short a date: |
|Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, |
|And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; |
|And every fair from fair sometime declines, |
|By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; |
|But thy eternal summer shall not fade |
|Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; |
|Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, |
|When in eternal lines to time thou growest: |
| So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, |
| So long lives this and this gives life to thee. |
| |
| |
Sonnet 34
|XXXIV. |
|Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, |
|And make me travel forth without my cloak, |
|To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way, |
|Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? |
|'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break, |
|To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, |
|For no man well of such a salve can speak |
|That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace: |
|Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief; |
|Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss: |
|The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief |
|To him that bears the strong offence's cross. |
| Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, |
| And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds. |
Winter by William Shakespeare
When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When Blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
Spring
by William Shakespeare
WHEN daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!--O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!--O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
WHEN daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!--O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
A Description of a City Shower
Careful observers may foretell the hour
(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower:
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Returning home at night, you'll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.
If you be wise, then go not far to dine,
You spend in coach-hire more than save in wine.
A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage.
Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen;
He damns the climate, and complains of spleen.
Mean while the South rising with dabbled wings,
A sable cloud a-thwart the welkin flings,
That swilled more liquor than it could contain,
And like a drunkard gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is born aslope,
Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean.
You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop
To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet, the dust had shunned the unequal strife,
But aided by the wind, fought still for life;
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
'Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust.
Ah! where must needy poet seek for Aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade;
Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain,
Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain.
Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen Goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's a-broach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits;
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds, he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through.)
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.
Now from all Parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their Trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell
What streets they sailed from, by the sight and smell.
They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid force
From Smithfield, or St. Pulchre's shape their course,
And in huge confluent join at Snow-Hill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn-Bridge.
Sweepings from butchers stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats and turnips-tops come tumbling down the flood.
In world nis noon so witer man
That al hire bountee telle can;
Hire swire is whittere than the swan,
And fairest may in town.
An hendy, etc.
Ich am for wowing al forwake,
Wery so water in wore.
Lest any reve me my make
Ich habbe y-yerned yore.
Bettere is tholien while sore
Than mournen evermore.
Geinest under gore,
Herkne to my roun:
An hendy, etc.
clever
excellence
neck/whiter
maid
wooing/worn out from waking
as
deprive me
I have been worrying long since
endure/for a time/ Fairest beneath clothing
song
References
hss.iitb.ac.in/courses/HS%20204/Lec1IntroLit.ppt
.../english/nael/middleages/welcome.htm
en.wiki/The_Tabard
› ... › The Canterbury Tales
canttran/nunprst/nunprst055-080.htm
en.wiki/Middle_English_Lyric
dictionary.middle+english+lyric/en-en/
college/.../16century/welcome.htm
.../Tomorrow_and_tomorrow_and_tomorrow_ (quotation)
1. teachers/docs/269_SwiftDescriptionofaCityShower.doc
william-shakespeare-sonnet-34.htm
archive/poem.html?id
› ... › Arthur Quiller-Couch
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